


Choosing With Care 1 -- Touching the Light, Facing the Dark

by Viola_Laterra



Series: Choosing With Care [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 02:17:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20827754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viola_Laterra/pseuds/Viola_Laterra
Summary: On the evening of Armageddon, Aziraphale and Crowley take Agnes Nutter's final prophecy -- and their relationship with each other -- rather seriously.





	Choosing With Care 1 -- Touching the Light, Facing the Dark

It was quite late at night, on the last day of the world. Well, it wasn't really the last day of the world, anymore, but it had been until only late afternoon, so it hadn't really sunk in, yet.

The demon and the angel who had saved the world, or really, failed to do several things they had been supposed to do, and half-accidentally enabled a handful of humans to save the world, were only a little drunk.

They were at Crowley's flat, and they'd had two bottles of wine and rather more Scotch than Aziraphale usually intended to drink. Because Scotch was the kind of beverage you really ought to appreciate the details of, not something to get drunk off of, he had said to himself in the past. So he'd had more than he thought was strictly advisable... and, really, even so... they weren't all that drunk. Not as drunk as they had been when they'd found out that the Antichrist had been born. Er, delivered. Something like that. 

So maybe it was only partly the drink, and much more the relief, that explained their behavior that night. And maybe the relief had as much to do with the fact that they'd both made it through the end of the world intact, in addition to the world making it through the end of the world intact. Crowley had certainly had the scare that Aziraphale had been discorporated in a wrong enough way that he'd never see his best friend again. And it was the end of the world, anyway, so he might have never seen his best friend again because there wouldn't be any seeing anybody ever again. He'd had some kind of half-hearted hope that even if he and Aziraphale couldn't run off somewhere together, at least they'd *end* together. Having his friend back, and his world back, was a powerful intoxicant.

Aziraphale, on the other hand, was feeling for the first time what it might be like not to be bound by the rules of Heaven anymore. And definitely for the first time, he was consciously realizing that maybe the rules of Heaven had never seemed right to him in the first place. Right from the start, when he helped Adam and Eve escape the Garden, he'd wanted to be on the humans' side, he realized now. And he had always assumed that Heaven was on the humans' side. But after Armageddon... it was pretty hard to ignore that Heaven was on Heaven's side. And maybe he didn't want to be part of that anymore. And he was fairly sure that, if they both survived the next several days, he would be likely to be able to have his own 'side'... he and Crowley, together. That pleased him inordinately. Though that didn't excuse the rather inappropriate statement Crowley had just made.

"You mean you've never..."

Aziraphale looked uncomfortable. "Of course not. Angels don't... well, they just don't."

Crowley looked at him sideways, the slit pupils of his eyes wide, relaxed. A grin crept across his face, beginning on one side but ending with all his teeth showing. Crowley, clearly, *had* had the experience.

He drawled lasciviously to his best friend, "You certainly have enjoyed other physical pleasures available to us on Earth."

Aziraphale nodded tightly. "Well, food. Wine. Dancing." A little smile flitted across his face. "Books... possessions. That sort of thing."

Crowley leaned forward across the table, towards Aziraphale. "And..." he smirked. "How did it feel, to inhabit the body of that woman?"

The angel looked at him, startled, but then smiled ever so slightly and said, "Well, it was quite uncomfortable for me, and I'm sure it was for her, too -- at least, at first. I think we got the hang of it... and there was something quite remarkable about sharing her body, just for a little while."

Crowley said, "It's not quite as intense as that is, but it's... similar."

Aziraphale smiled a little nervously. "Well, aren't we afraid that we might, I don't know, cancel each other out, explode or something?"

Crowley got up and walked to the bar to get himself more Scotch. "Another?" he asked Aziraphale. The angel shook his head, holding up a hand delicately in gentle refusal. Crowley poured some for himself and then walked back to the table. Instead of sprawling back into the chair opposite Aziraphale, he perched on the angular arm of the chair his friend was sitting in.

"We're going to have to know each other's forms to the tiniest detail, to pull this off, you know." Somehow, though it was the plan they had discussed, and Crowley said it in an earnest enough way, Aziraphale still felt just a little hint of seduction in there somewhere.

Aziraphale tried to fend it off. "Well, we already know each other quite well, after all these centuries, I'd think," he said. Crowley grinned at him and said, "Yes, but... we'll need intimate knowledge of each other's faces, for example. Not just each other's favorite taste in beverages or crepes."

Aziraphale looked up at Crowley perched above him, some unidentifiable mix of desire and anxiety in the angel's eyes. "But... but what about Evil and Good, I don't know, canceling each other out..."

Crowley gazed down at him, sipping his Scotch, then said dismissively, "Nonsense. We're both angels, I'm just a fallen one. And, if we're going to pull this off, this plan... we'll have to touch each other. Why not... make it a little more fun?"

Aziraphale looked away. Crowley said, "You *can't* be thinking that your side wouldn't approve. 'Your side' is quite likely to be planning your punishment as we speak."

The angel retorted, "And your side isn't?"

Crowley sighed. "Of course they are." They were silent for a few minutes.

Then the demon added, "If this doesn't work, you know, likely we'll both die. *Permanently.* So what have we got to lose?"

Crowley's logic wasn't actually entirely sound, but Aziraphale said softly, "Well... when you put it that way..." 

He trailed off, as Crowley leaned down, very close, and gently gave him a little kiss on the cheek. 

Aziraphale closed his eyes and drew his breath in slowly, swallowed delicately. "I... I do see the..." he hesitated a moment, flicking a glance nervously at Crowley, then finished, "...appeal." Crowley chuckled, low, gravelly, soft. "That's just a taste."

Then Aziraphale turned to his friend, who had contorted himself to get their faces next to each other, and very tentatively put a hand on Crowley's cheek. "Rough, isn't it. Unkempt." His look was somehow at once both delighted and disapproving. Crowley chuckled again. "Well, what would you expect from a demon?" He put a hand to Aziraphale's face in return, which was of course as soft, smooth, and sweet as a baby's bum -- angelic. "And you wouldn't have known that, if you hadn't touched me," he added with satisfaction. "Well," Aziraphale said.

It was Aziraphale, though, who then leaned closer and set his lips on Crowley's. The kiss may only have lasted a few moments, and from the outside might not even have looked terribly passionate. But in the end, now there was an angel perched on the arm of the chair, awkwardly contorted but looking extremely pleased with himself as he straightened up, and a demon sitting in that same chair, looking like he'd just had a revelation.

The not-demon breathed, "Oh. Oh, I do see why that's effective in tempting mortals."

The not-angel laughed out loud. "You know, of course, that there's a lot more to it than just kissing."

The not-demon looked up at him and said primly, "I *have* read nearly every book ever written by humans, so yes, I do know."

The not-angel said suggestively, "Any interest in... sampling the menu?"

There was a second where the desire that could only belong to someone who was a connoisseur of the finer things in life lit in the not-demon's eyes, but then he stood, now looking down at his friend perched on the arm of the chair, and said, "No, I think that was quite enough for the moment."

"Don't know how many more moments we'll have..." Crowley-as-Aziraphale said, half-teasing, half-desperate. 

Aziraphale-as-Crowley answered, "We'll, let's be optimistic that the plan will work."

"All right, all right," Crowley said. "I'll just show you the guest room then." Aziraphale nodded, and followed him past Crowley's beautiful houseplants, which Aziraphale thought just quivered slightly in some invisible breeze.

And then it was up to them, and the Almighty, to see how well the two of them knew each other, and whether they could pull off their plan after all.

**Author's Note:**

> I really struggled with supporting the 'people can be deep friends, know each other intimately, and never have to make it physical' perspective and the 'oh my god I am shipping that so hard' perspective. Because it's almost painful to watch how much Crowley loves Aziraphale, and how tentative Aziraphale is in reciprocating but how much he must want to.
> 
> But also, in the show, they aren't physically affectionate with each other at all, which seems appropriate for their characters (and the types of creatures they are). But we do know that at some point on the night of Armageddon, they switch faces and places. I thought maybe that might be a moment where they do experiment a little with physicality.
> 
> (note that I have not read the book but am planning to at some point!)


End file.
